The very first days of 2026 have witnessed the proliferation of Grok AI-generated deepfakes on X. Over the past decade, institutional reports have constantly reported the presence of gender-based violence online (e.g. Council of Europe Gender Equality Strategy 2016; UN Human Rights Council 2018; Amnesty International 2020; Haut Conseil à l’Égalité 2024). In 2017, the European Institute for Gender Equality published a report on cyber violence against women and girls and estimated that one in ten women had already experienced a form of cyber violence since the age of 15 (EIGE 2017: 1), encompassing cyber stalking, cyber harassment, gender-based hate speech, and non-consensual intimate image abuse (EIGE 2022).
Online gender-based violence is a widespread cross-cultural issue. Social media platforms enable the rapid spread of harmful discourse and the emergence of online communities united by hostility toward particular social groups, such as women and LGBTIQ+. A notable example of this phenomenon is the manosphere, which has received growing interest in recent years in linguistics. This rich literature has focused particularly on English-speaking communities (see Czerwinsky, 2023 for an overview), on discursive representations of masculinity and femininity, and antifeminism (e.g. Aiston 2024; Heritage & Koller 2020; Iveson & Formato 2022; Krendel et al. 2022), as well as on the lexicon (e.g. Ging et al. 2020; Gothard et al. 2021; Bogetić 2023).
Building on this literature, this international conference aims to bring together linguists working on issues related to online discourse on gender-based violence, with a particular focus on the latest developments in technology, transphobic discourse, and discourse outside English-speaking communities, among other topics. In addition to individual papers, there will be a round table discussion dedicated to young researchers working on these topics. A workshop will also be organised to give those who wish to do so the opportunity to discuss the emotional work that can arise from this type of research.
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